A base transceiver station (BTS) generally includes wireless communication components to establish and complete calls to and from mobile units (e.g., wireless telephones). A typical BTS includes numerous circuit packs that are usually separate circuit boards or cards configured to provide and control wireless communication functionality and operation. These circuit packs are connected to the BTS, and more particularly, are installed within slots of the BTS. Different circuit packs provide different wireless functionality and operation, such as control operations, radio communication functionality, signal conversion or power supply control. Further, more than one of the same type of circuit pack may be provided in connection with a single BTS.
In order for the BTS to properly operate, information (e.g., version information) relating to circuit packs installed in the slots of the BTS must be known or identified and associated with the circuit packs in specific slots. For circuit packs that include a single wire interface and communicate using a single wire or single line bus within the BTS, the slot location of a particular circuit pack is not readily ascertainable and information relating to a circuit pack cannot currently be associated with a specific slot within the BTS (i.e., cannot distinguish between different circuit packs in different slots of the BTS). Thus, it is not possible to determine slot specific information, for example, circuit pack version information for a specific circuit pack in a specific slot in the BTS, which may be needed for proper operation of the BTS (e.g., to locate circuit packs within specific slots to replace because of problems with those circuit packs).